


laurel wreath

by CrookedneighborCrookedheart



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, M/M, Missing Scene, Post-The Raven King, ish?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:08:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25044409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrookedneighborCrookedheart/pseuds/CrookedneighborCrookedheart
Summary: It should not be a hard thing; Gansey was fine, remade by Cabeswater— alive alive alive— and they defeated the demon. But the cost: Cabeswater was gone, and Noah was gone, Glendower was dead, and the quest was finished.Finished.OrThe immediate aftermath of Gansey's death and not-death.
Relationships: Noah Czerny & Richard Gansey III & Ronan Lynch & Adam Parrish & Blue Sargent, Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent
Comments: 3
Kudos: 39





	laurel wreath

Blue is still sitting on the front stoop when the BMW pulls up to 300 Fox Way, again. It is not strange to see the BMW here because Blue is very used to the boys pulling up unannounced after enduring it for nearly a year:  


_We’re here for a reading._

_We have to bury a body._

_We’re going to—_

_Cabeswater_

_the lake_

_Monmouth_

_—are you coming?_

It _is_ strange because the BMW pulled away from the house less than half an hour ago. Blue hadn’t even gone inside, yet. She might be procrastinating. The curtain on the front window has twitched a few times, and she knows it’s Maura or Calla or Jimi or the other women of Fox Way checking on her. Blue has only caught the motion out of the corner of her eye, unwilling to risk making direct eye contact, unwilling to risk them knowing that she saw, lest one of them take the acknowledgement as an invitation to join her on her stoop. 

She knows they’re worried. She knows they’re waiting for answers. Or maybe they already know what happened— it’s a house full of psychics, that’s not entirely unlikely. Maybe they’re just waiting to hear it from her. It should not be a hard thing; Gansey was fine, remade by Cabeswater— _alive alive alive_ — and they defeated the demon. But the cost: Cabeswater was gone, and Noah was gone, Glendower was dead, and the quest was finished. 

Finished. 

Going inside is, it turns out, a very difficult thing to do because going inside means spinning a tale out of the night like it was silk string, turning it into something fine and beautiful, a tapestry for other people’s eyes. A story with a hero and a quest, just like the legends they’d been chasing, except that in the legends, the losses made the heroes stronger, and Blue only feels tired. Every time she lets her mind wander just a little bit, she’s back on the side of the highway, and Gansey is falling from her arms. 

It had been easy to turn away from the memory when Gansey was in front of her, but now that he’d dropped her at home and gone back to Monmouth, there was nothing but that and the image of Gansey at her feet, his chest breathless and still. 

And she kept getting stuck on this: He’d dropped her off at home. Like they were coming back from any other excursion out to Cabeswater. Was that right? Was it because he needed time to himself after all that happened, or was it because that was simply what he always does? _They could all debrief tomorrow,_ he said, in that detached, controlled voice that only seemed to appear when he was hiding something, _after they’d all gotten some rest._ That voice wasn’t pleasant, but it was familiar, right? 

Right?

In those moments between when Gansey died and when he woke again, Adam and Blue and Ronan spoke to Cabeswater as well as they could through the ley line’s faulty connection. Cabeswater could not give its life for Gansey’s, but it could give itself to _remake_ him. Cabeswater built a life out of all his constituent parts— humanity and sorrow, wonder and misery and joy and love. But how do they know all of that made _Gansey_. Their Gansey. How could they be sure it’s him, and not a counterfeit, like one of Ronan’s dream things? Would they be able to tell the difference? 

Does it even matter? 

They have him, and he is alive— miraculously, impossibly alive— and Blue wants that to be enough. But it isn’t, and Blue hates her own faulty faith. 

She didn’t want to leave him when Ronan’s BMW pulled up to Fox Way the first time. It seemed impossible to let him out of her sight— he’s okay now, but what if he’s not later? She also did not want to leave Ronan who kept glancing over at Gansey from the drivers seat like Gansey might drop dead again or Adam who kept picking at his nails like he needed to know that his hands were still his own. She didn’t want to leave any of them, but Gansey said _tomorrow,_ and his word carried power between the three of them, just like it did in Cabeswater. 

_Wake up,_ he commanded, and the bones woke. 

_Cabeswater, make it safe,_ he commanded, and three mirror images of Blue with their hands stained red vanished like a mirage. 

_Tomorrow,_ he commanded, and so they dropped Blue on the doorstep of 300 Fox Way and left. 

His word still carry power. Maybe it is because Gansey was meant for greatness. Maybe because he sounded just as tired as the rest of them and twice as heartbroken. Maybe it is just because they love him. 

(Is that heartbreak enough to prove that this Cabeswater-made Gansey is just as real as the one they had before?)

So Blue didn’t expected to see the BMW or the Pig or even Adam’s stupid ChimeraCar until tomorrow. And to see the BMW so soon— Ronan must gotten to Monmouth because he no longer had any passengers, but that means that he had to have turned around pretty quickly. 

Ronan rolls down the window. “Get in the car, Sargent.” 

Blue thinks about asking why, mostly on principle. She doesn’t like to be ordered around, and with Ronan, it is better not to reenforce bad behavior. But she wants to be with him, with them, more than she wants to be sitting on the stoop of 300 Fox Way and more than she wants to try and wrap up all of this relief and hurt and exhaustion into a neat little package for the women waiting inside. It was not a package made for Fedex Same Day Delivery.

She does not ask why. She gets in the car.

Sitting next to him, Blue notices the staunch redness of Ronan’s knuckles, like he punched something. She’d think it was a someone, except that he’d hardly been gone long enough to get to Monmouth and back, let alone pick a fight.As it is, she’s impressed that he managed to squeeze in the time to punch anything. It must have been a very efficient temper tantrum, and Blue finds that she respects it.

Blue and Ronan are not often alone together. She thinks it has something to do with the sound of metal grinding on stone. The car stays as quiet as it was on their way home after Gansey— 

Well. It was fine in the end, anyway. 

_Glendower, Cabeswater, Noah, Noah, Noah._

Blue revises. Gansey is alive, and it hurts, anyway. 

Quiet isn’t a thing Blue knew Ronan could be. Even when he isn’t talking, it’s hard to forget he’s in the room. He’s loud in the way he lets his body speak for him, in the way the slant of his eyes or the snarl of his lip or the set of his shoulders tell you just what he thinks. 

His left hand rests on the wheel and his right rest on the gear shift, and there’s a tightness around his eyes, but he’s quiet, and it’s not a quiet that expects Blue to fill it. She’s grateful for it, almost as grateful as she is frightened of it. 

Sometimes it was easy to forget that Cabeswater was Ronan’s, that he gave it shape and form and a language to speak and a place here in Henrietta. Not now. Now, Blue could see the loss of it painted on the stony plane of his face, the despairing slump of his shoulders. 

Maybe he isn’t as quiet as she first thought. He just isn’t angry, and it’s such a stark change that it takes time to translate the rest.

When they pull into the parking lot of Monmouth, Blue gets out of the car. Ronan does not. The lot is empty other than the two of them, and the Camaro is more noticeable for being missing than it ever has been for being orange. Gansey would have to call to have it towed from where it broke down. For the time being, its loss feel like one more grief to add to the mounting pile. It threatens to bury Blue.

“You coming?” Blue asks. 

“No,” Ronan says. He doesn’t elaborate, and she doesn’t ask him to. She shuts the car door, and he pulls out of the parking lot. He does not squeal out of the parking lot the way Blue had come to expect. Tired or mourning or quiet. Maybe the whole world is quieter. 

Inside, Blue almost looks past Gansey, though it should be unthinkable. Gansey draws the eye, whether he’s trying to or not. He isn’t the sort of person one can look past. But the high ceilings and the large windows dwarf him, wash out all his color like the light might shine right through him if he moves the wrong way. The sprawl of mini-Henrietta stretches the breadth of the floor, and he’s impossibly distant. It used to make him a king, this palace, with the scale model of his domain stretched before him. 

He sits on the edge of his bed with his feet propped up on the chair from his desk, elbows on his knees. He’d taken off Henry’s borrowed Aglionby sweater but he was wearing the same pants, streaked with mud from the cave where they found a king or from falling to the ground when he— 

_Come on Blue, he’s fine. It’s him, and he’s fine._

The walk down the main street of mini-Henrietta seems longer than it ever has before. Gansey doesn’t turn to look at her, though he must hear her footsteps, irreverently loud in the spacious apartment. He doesn’t look the same as he did yesterday, but then, his whole life has changed since yesterday. It would be unfair to expect otherwise. 

Except that if he is changed, how will Blue know if this Gansey is different because he’s supposed to be or because Cabeswater got something wrong? How will she know this Gansey is her Gansey? How would she live if he is not? 

And that’s the crux of it, really, the thought that sets her heart pounding against her ribcage in double-time. Before her, she sees a promise that she is safe from all of her worst fears— Gansey will not die, at least not permanently, and she will not live knowing that she killed her true love. But if she lets herself believe it, and it turns out to be an illusion, another trick of magic that can’t hold water in the real world— that will break her. 

She knew she’d have to lose him once. She doesn’t think she could stand to lose him twice. So she has to be sure.

Blue sinks down at the other end of the bed, leaving a stretch of white linens wide enough to fit two more people between her thigh and his. As soon as she sits, it’s easy to see what caught his attention. The wooden desk stands across from his bed, carrying the same load it has since the first time Blue came to Monmouth. There’s maps and notebooks, dowsing rods and small electronics and sticky notes with a question or a phrase or a single word meant to encapsulate a thought, hold it in stasis until Gansey was ready for it. It is his workshop, his laboratory, and his smithy. Here, he charted his course through the Virginian wilds; here, he concocted his purpose; here, he forged a _self_ , something separate from where he came from. Something all his own. 

Before, the desk heaved with the life Gansey had given his quest, with possibilities scribbled on maps and dreams hung on each tantalizing discovery. Now it’s a shrine; _in memoriam_ Gansey’s heart. 

“I don’t know what to do with it all.” Gansey takes a deep breath, and turns his head towards her, pulling his eyes away from the desk for the first time since she walked in. For a moment, Blue wishes he hadn’t; Gansey has never learned to keep anything to himself, not from the people who matter, and there’s a furrow between his brow, a downturn at the corners of his lips that belie a vulnerability so fathomless that it hurts to look at head-on. Like one of Ronan’s dream-things that bend the laws of nature, Blue has trouble wrapping her brain around it. 

(Is this enough? Gansey, torn open— did this prove that Cabeswater gave him back in full? There was nothing more true to the boy she knew than the way he felt about his king. Surely this was enough.) 

( _Why wasn’t it enough?_ ) 

Blue considers the clutter before her. Surely he can’t throw it away, but neither can he leave it there indefinitely. It’s not a monument; it’s a mausoleum, and nothing new can flourish under the overwhelming presence of the dead. And yet, the thought of packing it all up into neat boxes to tuck away into storage—the thought fills Blue with a dread not unlike the one that welled up each time she thought of Gansey dying. 

Blue understands that look of vulnerability, the desire to take all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours— the last eight months?— and ask someone else to hold onto it for a while. It’s just. Too much. Right now, it’s too much. 

She asks, “Do you have to figure it out today?”

Gansey tips his head towards her, just a fraction of an inch, as if to say, _point. “_ Sooner rather than later.” He lifts his hand and rubs his thumb against his lower lip, lost in thought. A familiar tick, as recognizable as a name, but so small, so insignificant. Blue probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it if she’d never seen it again. 

Blue stops breathing at the sight of it. If Cabeswater can remake him down to the ticks of his fingers, then surely— _surely_ — this has to be the whole of him, with every part of him in it’s place. _If this isn’t enough, will anything ever be?_

Blue’s eyes prickle, tears nudging at the edges of her vision but not further. She almost wishes they would fall; a good cry might be just what she needs. But instead her eyes just ache with the nearness of it. She pinches her lips together and tries to breath. 

“Ah, Jane,” Gansey sighs. He scoots across the bed so their legs press together, ankle to hip, and slings an arm around her back. He doesn’t say anything else, and Blue rests her head on his shoulder. In a way, it’s not all that different from the nights she spent on the phone with him, the comfort of knowing he’s there better than any words he could offer. 

_Oh please_ , she thinks, inhaling the scent of rain and dirt clinging to his clothes and mint hidden underneath, _please be real_. 

There’s a buzzing noise, so faint that Blue thinks she imagined it at first. Then it comes again, and she realizes it’s Gansey’s phone, lost in the sheets behind her. Gansey makes no move to look for it, but Blue flips it right side up, just to make sure it’s not Adam— or god forbid, Ronan. Blue can’t handle another crisis today. 

It is not Adam or Ronan. It is Blue Sargent. 

Blue Sargent is not calling Gansey’s phone because she is sitting right next to him. The answer to this riddle is obvious, of course, but it takes her brain a minute to catch up. Blue, still lacking a cell phone of her own, only ever calls Gansey from the phone at 300 Fox Way. 

Blue picks up the call. “Hello?” 

Gansey’s head snaps down to look at her, knocking her in the head with his chin. She holds his gaze as she listens to the voice on the other line shout her name. 

“Hi, mom,” she says, and Gansey’s body relaxes against her own. 

“Where are you? We saw you on the porch, and then you were gone.” Maura’s voice is equal parts distressed and angry. Blue winces. It’s possible that she should have poked her head in before she left with Ronan, let them know where she was headed. 

“I’m at Monmouth.” Blue would have thought that would be an easy assumption, given that she was answering Gansey’s phone. 

Maura’s quiet for a long moment. “You’re not alone are you?” 

“No, Gansey’s here.” 

“Gansey’s… there?” Maura repeats. 

“Yeah? Oh,” Blue sits up with the force of her realization. _They didn’t know._ “Yes! He’s here, sorry. He’s fine— er, well, he’s alive.” 

Gansey snorts a short breath out his nose. It’s maybe the most indelicate noise Blue has ever heard him make. She elbows him in the stomach. 

“He’s alive?” Maura’s heavy exhale crackles through the phone. “We were so sure— well, we thought— you know we felt something go wrong— it was the ley line, of course, so—” She cuts herself off again, and Blue tries to remember the last time her mom was sounded so discomposed. She laughs one short, sharp _Ha!_ “He’s still alive.” 

“Well,” Blue says, “not ‘still.’” 

“‘Not still?’” 

For a moment, Blue wishes she could have this conversation in person. Maybe it would seem easier, if she had her mother there in front of her. And then she remembers how she felt while she was sitting one the stoop of 300 Fox Way, when going inside felt like walking to the executioner’s block. It’s possible that this isn’t ever going to be an easy story to tell. She says, “He’s alive… again, I guess.” 

And then she tells Maura. How they found Gansey, and then Glendower, and how there was no favor to stop the demon. How Ronan started to fall to pieces in the front seat of the BMW. _Unmade_. How _a life for a life is a good sacrifice_ , and how it was one Gansey made. And then, finally, how they beseeched Cabeswater, and Cabeswater answered, and Gansey came back to them. 

The telling of it is stark, plain. She leaves out every nonessential she can manage— doesn’t mention Adam’s hands or ripped stitches or the way Henry yelled at them when they had been ready to give up hope. _You said you were Gansey’s magicians. Do something_. She doesn’t mention Noah. She doesn’t mention the way her whole chest seizes with fear at the thought of Gansey being remade. _Can you ever make something the same way twice?_ As she tells it, she leans back into Gansey, still so uncertain and yet so unwilling to let him go. Gansey squeezes his arm around her, and she knows that he hears her omissions. He stays quiet through it all, which feels like understanding. 

The bare bones will suffice for now. It’s all Blue has in her. 

“Alive again.” Maura says when Blue is finished, as though agreeing with Blue’s assessment. “He seems to have a knack for that.”

“Ha. Yeah. Listen, mom, I think I’m going to stay here for a bit. I’ll be home later.” 

“Fine,” Maura agrees easily. “I want you home for dinner.” 

“Okay.”

“Bring the boys, if you have to.” 

“Okay,” Blue repeats, but there’s a small smile to go with it. 

Blue ends the call and places Gansey’s phone facedown on the bed once more. She thought that she had reached the limit of how tired her body and mind could feel, but after regaling the whole tale— or the half-tale, as it were— she finds that she underestimated her own capacity for exhaustion. 

Blue flops back onto Gansey’s bed, her legs still dangling off the edge. A moment later, Gansey follows her down. 

“You really shouldn’t be sitting on your bed in those pants. They’re filthy,” Blue says. 

“I thought about changing, but I didn’t get any further than that,” Gansey says. 

Blue turns her face to his. His eyes are closed, face pointed to the ceiling. The strong lines of his profile stand out in sharp relief against the light coming in from the windows on the far wall. He looks like a fairy tale, a sleeping prince who can only be woken with a kiss. It’s strange, after going so long thinking that she couldn’t kiss him, to think that she probably could, if she wanted to. He would probably kiss her back. 

(Cabeswater must have gotten that much right, right? If it could capture his ticks, surely it must have been able to capture the way he felt about her. If “true love” counts for anything, let it be for this.)

Gansey opens his eyes, and turns his face towards her’s. They’re so close now that Blue can feel his breath on her face. “You’ll stay?” 

“Yeah,” Blue says, “of course.” 

There’s this moment of quiet, and Blue thinks he might kiss her. She thinks they probably need a nap first. And then she thinks, _Am I really safe to kiss now?_ Because she’d always assumed it would be a one-time event, given the whole dying prediction, but now that her true love had died and returned is her kiss still lethal? 

And then the front door jimmies loudly and swings open, and Blue is so grateful to have something to halt that train of thought because she was feeling very ill-equipped to handle it at the moment. Too much, her brain yelled. Too much, too much. Blue snaps her head around so quickly her neck twinges. 

Gansey sits up. “So much for waiting for tomorrow, huh?” 

“You were being stupid,” Ronan says, following Adam across the threshold. “I made an executive decision.”

So that’s where Ronan went, Blue thinks. He was gone much longer than it takes to get from Monmouth to St. Agnes, and Blue would have chocked it up to Ronan and Adam needing a minute to themselves if not for Ronan’s red-rimmed eyes. In this, his Irish blood betrays him, his pale skin emphasizing the high color. 

It is one thing to see Ronan cry over Gansey’s lifeless body. It is different to see the evidence of it while he was in his natural habitat and without the shock of the moment. This, more than any of the rest, makes the ordeal feel real.

It isn’t a story and they aren’t heroes. They’re kids, and the night had been terrible to all of them.

“So you’re calling the shots, now?” Blue says mildly. “That’s dangerous.”

“Get fucked, Sargent,” Ronan says, sounding equally ambivalent. Ronan straddles the back of Gansey’s desk chair, and Adam sits on the floor with his back to the desk. 

Adam is the one who asks. “What now?” 

Gansey blinks and a small grin pulls at his lips just enough to show a sliver of white teeth, like he’d only been waiting for someone to ask. In a moment, he hardly looked like the same boy he’d been when Blue walked into Monmouth. It’s like turning on a light; this is where Gansey thrives— where he can take the lead, where he’s needed. “Well, it’s quite clear, isn’t it? Adam will be getting his college acceptances soon.” 

Adam scoffs. “Don’t jinx it. And even if I do get in, you don’t know if I’ll get the money.” 

“Sure I do.” Gansey says. “And Ronan will finish fixing up the Barns, and I will tell my parents that I am taking a gap year for my own ‘academic enrichment’ on account of the fact that I did not apply to any colleges.” 

Blue frowns. “You didn’t?” 

“Not one,” Gansey confirms, gamely. “I was relatively certain I would be dead, so I didn’t think it was the most productive use of my time. And maybe I’ll persuade Jane into taking an ill-advised trip with me.” 

For once, Blue doesn’t stop to consider whether it’s feasible or not. She says, “Roadtrip. And Henry’s coming. I promised him.” It wasn’t exactly the promise, but close enough. It doesn’t matter if it actually happens, she finds. Just the thought of it on the horizon sends a small tingle of energy through her. They’ll figure it out. 

“Naturally. But before that, there’s finals, and graduation.” 

Blue wrinkles her nose at the thought of going back to school. The existence of Mountain View High is something she endeavors to ignore while she isn’t actively on the premises. 

Adam says, “It sounds so… mundane.” 

“Mundane?” Gansey rolls the word around in his mouth, then leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees once more. This time, it’s to lean in to the space between the four of them, like he’s about to share a secret. It doesn’t make him small, it makes him powerful. “No, there are wonders for us, yet, I think. Up to us to find them.” 

_This_ , Blue thinks. This is Gansey, a king surrounded by his court. A boy dreaming of the world that lies beyond graduation day. Ronan crosses his arms on the back of the chair and leans his chin against it. Adam leans his head back against the desk but keeps his gaze fixed on Gansey. A savage ache pulls through Blue’s heart. No one could take his place here— not even a counterfeit forged in magic— and so it must be him. It must be. For anything else that might have been changed when he was remade by Cabeswater, this was the same. 

It’s possible that on another day, Blue would chafe at having all these next steps lines up in neat little rows. It’s possible that none of it goes the way Gansey laid it before them— if Adam doesn’t get in or doesn’t get the money or if Ronan can’t revive the Barns or something else horrible shows up between now and finals— which, with their track record, does not seem improbable. 

It’s also possible that it all happens exactly that way. In this moment, with the whole of Monmouth soaking in pale sunlight and Gansey’s words lingering in the air, that is far easier to believe. 

**Author's Note:**

> idek man. this is my first time posting something in like four years but i just finished rereading the books (again) and i was just itching to write something.


End file.
